Wendell Cox, senior fellow at Heartland Institute in Chicago, spoke at Grainger Hall Wednesday evening about urban sprawl and the possibility of a commuter rail that would serve Madison’s downtown and urban areas.

Cox first talked about the purpose of an economic system to create and distribute as much as possible. He said the mobility of people in an area (cars and public transportation) is an important factor in creating wealth in an economic system.

Urban sprawl was a main issue in Cox’s talk. Smart growth and new urban groups around the country are trying to limit the amount of urban sprawl in the nation in order to preserve agricultural lands.

“Urbanization is not a threat to agriculture,” Cox said.

Cox also discussed the issue of suburbs taking inhabitants away from city populations, when in fact many people living in suburbs moved from areas outside the city. He said 88 percent of suburban growth in Minneapolis was from outside the city while the remaining 12 percent was from the city of Minneapolis itself.

Higher populations in an area contribute to more congestion on the streets of a city; therefore, air pollution is higher in cities with higher populations. In addition, higher population density leads to longer commutes in an area.

Cox used Portland, Ore., as an example of poor urban-growth planning by restricting the size of the urban-sprawl area. This allowed fewer houses to be built in the city, which lowered the affordability of housing in Portland.

Portland also faces a higher unemployment rate as a result of the limit of urban sprawl. Firms did not have the room to build and limited the potential for new jobs in the city. Cox gave an example of Dell computers moving from Austin, Texas, to Nashville, Tenn., because there was a better transportation system in Nashville.

Planners in Portland also thought people would move to mass transit, but not many people have.

The estimated cost of urban transit systems such as the proposed commuter rail train in Madison is $240 million, but Cox suggested that the actual cost of the rail would be around $480 million, double the original estimate.

Cox also mentioned that mass-transit commutes were two times as long as commutes by car.

Cox maintained, however, that he was not against mass-transit systems.

“I enjoyed reading on the bus. That’s where I learned all this stuff,” he said. “Transit doesn’t provide mobility because it can’t provide mobility,” Cox said. For instance, a commuter rail system would be limited to the existing railways and would not be able to serve areas such as downtown.

Cox believes the commuter rail system is a bad idea for Madison, and as for the idea of a trolley system downtown, Cox said it was craziness. A commuter rail will not reduce the amount of traffic in the city, and extending the buses to serve the urban areas would be cheaper.

Peter Herreid, who was in attendance at the meeting, said he thought the statistics used to compare some European incomes to those of minority incomes in America were “sketchy.” Herreid also thought the feasibility of a commuter rail line in Madison should be looked into.